The Effectiveness of Medical Communication Skill of Medical Students, through an Emphasis on Role Play

Objectives Medical doctors require outstanding communication skills when meeting with their patients. Thus medical student need to education and training about medical communication skill. More attention is being given to the subject but not many studies have been done in the medical education field. As communication skills are provided to students as a subject in medical educational curriculum, the assessment of its effectiveness needs to be undertaken. Methods In the year 2010 and 2011, first-year medical students at The Kosin University College of Medicine took 'Communication skills' course in total, 154 first-year medical students survey results was the modified and translated version of 'Beyer-Fetzer's Essential Elements of Communication Skills Assessment Sheet'. The assessment sheets were used as the pre-test and post-test to analyse the differences, which were put through the paired t-test. Results All categories of communication skills showed an improvement. For year 2010, a statistically significant difference was shown into the 22 questions, whereas in 2011, improvements were shown in all questions. Conclusions From the result, it is clear that in order to create an effective communication skills program, the content should be more structured and focused on the program objectives.